Unhealthy
by recoverydelta
Summary: After an incident causes Candace to realise just how unhealthy her relationship with Jeremy is she almost breaks down, but her brother is willing to do whatever it takes to get her back on her feet.


**Author's Note: I'm not even through the first season yet, so there may be some things that aren't really relevant anymore. Basically by the end of every episode I'm left with a strong desire to hold Candace and stroke her hair and tell her that she's amazing no matter what anyone else says, because that poor girl just can't catch a break. Also, with my third fic under my belt I seem to be firmly establishing my self as an incest shipper. Man, my therapist would have a field day with that. Anyway, enjoy the story!**

* * *

Candace stared into the mirror as her horrified reflection stared back. This was the breaking point. She had gone too far and even she knew it now. She could barely recognise herself now and it disgusted her. The neurotic, obsessive, and paranoid girl had been told by the man of her dreams about a new girl in his life. This new girl was a punk rocker that Jeremy had met after one of his shows and they had jammed together. He thought she sounded good and had great style. Sure, Candace didn't hear him say anything that overtly revealed his romantic feelings for the girl, but it was implied. She was sure of it. That conversation led to her standing in front of the mirror wearing a ton of black eye makeup, an outfit comprised to clothes that had basically been torn to pieces, multiple piercings on her eyebrows and nose, and her hair bleached white with half her head shaved in a way that she could probably play off as an attack by a crazed trainee hairdresser. She felt tears begin to fall down her face as she finally realised how bad she was and how unhealthy this relationship was for her.

Candace would be hard-pressed to come up with a relationship of hers that actually _was_ healthy. Her relationship with her mother was strained at best. You can only go so long with someone telling you that the things you, and everybody else, have been seeing are all in your head before you come to the conclusion they'll just never believe you. She could kind of understand her mother's thoughts, she's always hearing about these wild contraptions that she never sees, but she had been explicitly told by the boys several times that everything Candace had told her about them was absolutely true only to play it off as an overactive imagination. Once Candace realised the futility of her actions she tried to stop, but couldn't, just another one of her unhealthy relationships.

Candace walked over to her bed and fell into it face first as she cried silently. How had she turned out this way? She just wanted to be happy, but she couldn't remember a time that she actually felt any kind of joy from being with Jeremy. Every action she made was for the sole purpose of making him happy. She had spent so long behaving in ways that would leave a good impression of the guy, or changing her personality to something more pleasant. She had spent so long doing these things that now she wasn't actually sure who she was as a person. What kind of things did she do in her free time? What were her hobbies? The only answer she could come up with was "whatever Jeremy likes to do" and it disgusted her. If the changes she had made today were something she decided to do on her own how far would she go if he asked her? Those thoughts terrified her as visions of herself acting like his slave flowed through her mind. Feeling like she was about to throw up she bolted for the bathroom.

Without even knocking she threw open the bathroom door and collapsed over the bowl before emptying the contents of her stomach. As she silently wept she suddenly became acutely aware of the sound of the shower running.

"Hey Candace!" A cheery voice said. She wiped her eyes and looked up to see Phineas' head poking out from behind the curtain. The moment their eyes locked the smile faded from his face. He was a smart kid. He'd probably already assumed that this was somehow Jeremy related. With a sigh he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked over to kneel down in front of her. Normally she'd find this situation pretty awkward but by this point she was so mentally exhausted that she could barely even control her own body. She saw her brother snap his fingers in front of her face but couldn't respond. She didn't even blink. She felt the boy begin to remove her clothes and completely froze. _What is he doing? I need to stop this. Why can't I move?_ Candace thought as her top and jeans were cast aside. Now down to just her underwear, his arms slip under her own as she was dragged across the bathroom floor. She felt herself being lifted and placed in the bathtub. When the water hit her body she gasped and released the breathe she didn't realise she was holding.

"I'll be right back." She heard phineas say as he left the room. She had no idea what to do right now, but the water splashing over her body had certainly helped to drag her mind back to her body.

It was only a few minutes later that Phineas returned to the bathroom fully clothed with a set of her normal clothes in one arm. His other arm held something that looked like a sci-fi ray gun. Her eyes widened as he pointed it at her face and fired. She didn't feel anything. Her brother held a small mirror in front of her face and Candace stared at her reflection. Not the strange twisted girl that she had turned herself into. Her own piercing-less face with her bright red hair. She smiled slightly at the sight. She looked over the see Phineas smiling too.

"Time-reversal ray." He explained. "Glad I kept it. You look much better like that." The compliment made her blush slightly. She noticed his eyes drift a little lower down her body before his face turned red and he looked away. She had totally forgotten her current state of dress and quickly brought her arms up to cover herself. Phineas told her to take her time and come see him when she was done, and that there was something that he wanted to show her as he once again left the room.

Candace spent several minutes just lying there in the bathtub as the water cascaded over her body. She couldn't take her eyes of the mirror. She was herself again. In just moments her brother had fixed all her problems and made her feel better, just like usual. The idea that this was just like usual was something she'd never noticed before, but it was nonetheless true. Whenever she tried to do pretty much anything things would never go the way she wanted, and even though a lot of his projects were a major cause of her problems Phineas would find some way to incorporate her plans into his own and make them more beautiful that she could have hoped. Notable examples that suddenly came to her was her song to her mother that Phineas had helped present on her birthday. Or the time when she sang that duet with him when he became a one hit wonder. Thinking back on it it was kinda weird that he had been so determined to sing a love duet with his sister. With a sigh Candace pulled herself to her feet and exited the shower. She slowly dried herself and dressed before searching out her brother. Whatever he wanted to show her was probably insane and dangerous, but she was sure that it would make her happy.

She walked into the backyard to find the boys working on some kind of vehicle. It looked like it was straight out of a comic book. Phineas put down his wrench and declared the vehicle completed before noticing that Candace had joined them. Every instinct in her body was telling her that she should be calling her mom right now, but she fought against it. It would be useless anyway. Phineas turned to address his step-brother.

"I know we had plans for this today, but I've gotta help Candace with something. I hope you don't mind?" He asked. Ferb just gave him a simple thumbs up. Phineas smiled and grabbed his sisters hand, leading her into the machine. As soon as she was strapped into her seat she felt the machine start to move, quickly picking up speed. She looked out the window and saw a large blue ball underneath them. That was definitely the earth. She was gonna start freaking out pretty soon. She looked ahead of the spacecraft and saw a large swirling sphere ringed with a blue glow. That was definitely something to freak out over. She started screaming and pointed at the obstruction that they were clearly flying towards.

"Oh that? That's just a wormhole." Phineas explained. "It took a lot of work. Do you know what negative mass is? You probably don't, but let me tell you it is tricky stuff." Candace just stared at him dumbly as they flew into the portal. They instantly passed through it and the scenery around them suddenly changed. Before them was a giant swirling mass of light.

"That right there is the Milky Way." He told her as he pointed towards one of the spiral's arms. "That's roughly where we were a moment ago." Candace had to admit that although the sight was terrifying, it was incredibly beautiful. She smiled over to her brother who was staring at her with a happy expression on his face.

The pair stared at each other for a few moments before Phineas started to speak again.

"I suppose you're wondering why I brought you out here." Candace nodded her head. "You tend to spend a lot of time inside your own head thinking about your relationships with other people, and you think and think and think yourself in circles to the point where almost everything you do is based on the perceptions of those around you." She couldn't argue with that. Earlier that day she had had several holes stabbed into her face because she thought it might make Jeremy happy.

"You've never really taken a step back to look at the world around you." He continued. "The only experience we will ever have in life is our own. I can never experience life as you see it, and you can't experience it as I do either. We will only ever have out own perspectives of the world around us, which means that our own thoughts and feelings will always carry more weight than anyone else's." Philosophical talks like this were always tough for Candace. There was a lot of abstract ideas that were thrown around and most of the time they went over her head, but she was pretty sure she understood what he was saying.

"Somehow you've managed to talk yourself into the idea that your relationships with other people are the most important thing going on in this universe. You think that as long as those relationships persist then everything will be great and you'll be happy, so you do everything in your power to keep them going, but you've totally forgotten why and they've been glorified in your head so much that you're scared to do anything else." She was about to protest but he just kept speaking. "In the grand scheme of things you desperately clinging to those ideas makes no real impact. If your relationships were to break down tomorrow everything out here would still be doing just fine." Candace looked away from her brother and out into the great cosmos.

"Don't you think that's sad?" She asked.

"I don't think that." He replied with a shrug. "It means I can be as happy as I want. If nothing really matters then I can change anything at any time to make things more pleasant, provided those changes didn't negatively effect anyone else of course."

"So you pretty much brought me into space just to tell me "life is what you make it"?" She said with a smile.

"That's right Candace." Phineas said, taking her hand into his own. "Life is what you make it, and you seemed to have forgotten that. Nobody really matters but you. Your happiness should be your top priority. Never change yourself for a guy because you're perfect." Candace once again blushed at his compliment.

"I can't believe you would do all this for me. I might be the luckiest sister in the world." Candace said with a laugh.

"Well it's because I love you." Phineas replied, a little shyly.

"I think pep-talks in space go a little bit beyond what most brothers would do, this is seriously amazing." She looked over at him to see that his face was a little red. He quickly turned that key in the ignition.

"Well we can talk more about great brothers when we get back to earth." He said quickly as the spacecraft started to move. He seemed to be nervous. A trait that she had never seen on him before.

"Well now I'm curious" She said, looking slightly amused. "We can talk about it here, right?"

"I would prefer were were in a place where you could, I dunno, run away from me if you felt the need to." He sighed.

"Are you some kind of evil monster?" She asked, feeling a little worried by the grave tone Phineas was using.

"That's kind of a matter of perspective." He replied, causing her to worry no less than she already was. "but I guess me saying that kinda goes against pretty much everything I just told you."

"I won't die if you tell me, right?" He shook his head. "So just tell me."

"Okay." Phineas said as he took a deep breath to prepare himself. "I love you."

"I love you too, so what was it you wanted to-" She cut herself off as her thoughts started to catch up. He loved her? And probably not sibling love? Her jaw dropped.

Finding out that your younger brother is in love with you is not easy to deal with, but Candace thought she was doing pretty well. She hadn't started screaming, or attacking him, or trying to jump out of the vehicle. I guess it's kinda hard to hate someone for loving you when you've seen what that love will help them do for you. He brought her out to gaze upon the Milky Way. That's pretty amazing. Jeremy would never be able to do that.

"Hey Candace, you doin' okay there?" She quieted him with a finger and returned to her thoughts. Why was she even comparing the two? Jeremy was hot, and funny, and talented, and had unknowingly fueled an unhealthy obsession that caused her to completely forget just who she was as a person. Okay, so that last one was pretty negative, but Phineas was her brother and all he'd done, apart from cheering her up today was... Cheering her up every other time that she'd been upset in any way. Thinking back she couldn't actually think of a time where anyone else had given her that kinda support. Dammit, She should have been feeling disgusted or something but here she was comparing her brother to the man she thought she loved.

Candace looked over at the boy beside her. She supposed he wasn't particularly unattractive, but he was her brother. How would that even work? It would definitely have to be some kind of secret relationship and those things never work out, but Phineas was a genius, he could probably figure it out. And she was once again legitimately thinking about a relationship with her brother. Well, there was only one way to really find out. She turned to her brother, who turned to face her with a worried look on his face. She had been silent for a while, so that made sense. Candace begin to move her face towards his. She was inches away when he gently pushed her away. She looked at him, a little confused.

"I have absolutely no idea what's going through your head right now, but I don't think you're ready to get back into the dating scene yet." He stated. "I don't know if you remember, but earlier you were so out of it that you let me undress you."

"Yes, I remember!" She yelled as she blushed slightly at the memory. "This is just something I need to do right now. I need to know." Phineas let out a slight sigh. He pulled her closer to him before gently placing a hand on her cheek. At a pace slow enough for her to pull out at any time his moved his face towards hers and their lips met and he began to kiss her. After a short moment she returned the kiss. It felt good. It felt way better than she thought it should have. She felt his tongue brush against her lower lip, so she parted them slightly and allowed him into her mouth. Their tongues danced around for ages until everything was suddenly interrupted by her own moan. Quick experiments weren't supposed to feel that good.

They pair broke apart and quickly steadied their breathing.

"Thank you for your help." Candace said quickly when their eyes met again.

"No, I should be thanking you." Phineas replied. "I never thought this would ever happen." She felt a little bad at his comment. She kissed a guy that loved her even though she didn't think she felt the same way, but still, she had to know. If she was actually considering a relationship with her brother, which for some unfathomable reason she was, she had to actually be able to kiss the guy. She just wasn't expecting it to feel so good.

"You've given me a lot to think about." She said simply. The rest of the short trip home was made in a silence which broke as soon as they touched down again.

"I know you said that I've given you a lot to think about, but don't think about "us" too much." He told her. "I really think you need to remember who you are before you start forging any new paths." She smiled at the sentiment as they unstrapped themselves and left the vehicle.

"And no matter what happens between us I want you to remember that you'll always be my sister." Phineas said.

"And you'll always be my brother." Candace replied, ruffling his hair. The pair shared a smile for a few moments before going their separate ways to ponder where they were going to go from here.


End file.
